Shrub Sales

Be on the alert for super shrub sales right now. Last week we scooped up 12 Boursault Rhododendrons, six un-named deciduous azaleas, and two Delaware Valley White azaleas (iffy in our garden) --- for less than $400. The sign said 50% off, but I’m sure it was a lot more than that. What’s the big deal, you ask? Well the rhodies are more than three feet across and about three feet tall with trunks more than two inches thick; the azaleas, only slightly smaller. The local nursery owner said he just wanted to move them out of inventory.

Another local nursery just ran an ad offering 50% off all shrubs, we went over there this weekend and got two wonderful Japanese Andomeda and a huge Viburnam mariesii for 40 bucks.

Timing is everything, of course. I spent last Saturday depressed after a morning of flipping through my extensive collection of shade gardening books looking for ideas and inspiration. Nothing. Then it hit me --- a wall of rhodies against the deer fence, fronted by azaleas, then a collection of native ferns in the foreground and, finally a groundcover of Allegheny spurge (Pachysandra procumbens).

Then depression. How many decades would my rhodie cuttings take to match the size of their 15 year-old cousins out back, or their 30 year-old parents out front? Would I live long enough to see them flower?

Problem solved. On our way back from a garden party, we stopped at a traffic light. There it was. Like a cosmic sign. Well, it was a hand-written, spray-painted sign: “Rhodies & Azaleas 50% Off.” In gardening, as in karate, one must be prepared to strike when the opportunity presents itself. All senses must be on high alert, scanning the horizon with radar-like precision for any hint of one’s target. And just as in karate, the target can vanish in an instant. While you were busy thinking, “What’s the catch?” I was signing my charge slip and loading my treasures into the truck.

Popular posts from this blog

Detention Basins: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Image
In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which ...
Keep reading

Please Garden Responsibly. Because What You Spray in Your Garden Doesn’t Stay in Your Garden

Image
American Lady caterpillar on licorice plant. Photo: Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden Scores of their silky tents covered the licorice plant in the container on my porch. Inside the tents, something was gobbling up the leaves faster than I could pick them off. The plant must have been infested when I bought it. As I reached for my organic insecticide, I thought, “Wait, you don’t know what kind of caterpillars these are!” I recalled an article on pest management by a friend who cautioned: “Sometimes, the best treatment is no treatment at all.” It took the better part of the afternoon for me to identify the miniature mowing machines. In the meantime, half of them had started dropping from their perches and wriggling off into the underbrush. I hoped I had made the right decision. The licorice plant was devastated. But then I noticed that the caterpillars had not eaten the leaves all the way down to the stem. Possibly, secondary buds could sprout and still provide a silvery...
Keep reading

Musings on the Relativity of Time and The Arithmetic of Overpopulation

Image
I celebrated my birthday recently. Beyond a certain age, birthdays become a double-edged sword. You’re glad you made it to the next one, but realize that there are far fewer years ahead of you than behind you. The list of absent friends grows ever longer. Colleagues grow grey; everyone else looks like they just graduated from middle school. I used to console myself by calculating that I still had at least 2 5 more years to go, which made the end point seem very far off. But, now that would mean I’d live to an unrealistically old age, a concept supported by neither family history nor actuarial tables. I’m reminded of Einstein’s summary of his Theory of Relativity: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour." I guess I’ve been having too much fun. But that can’t go on forever. My immortality would not be good for the planet. It’s not sustainable. At the same time that medical advances have...
Keep reading